Report: Injury Forces Tomasz Drwal off UFC 81 Card

Tomasz Drwal (14-2 MMA, 0-1 UFC) has been scratched from next month’s UFC 81 event with an injured knee.

The fighter’s manager recently confirmed the injury with our friends at the German site groundandpound.de.

Drwal was scheduled to face fellow light heavyweight David Heath (7-2 MMA, 2-2 UFC), who’s fighting for the first time since a loss to Renato “Babalu” SobralÂ in August, at the SuperBowl weekend event. UFC 81 takes place at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas and airs live on pay-per-view.

A replacement hasn’t yet been named; UFC.com still lists Drwal as a UFC 81 fighter.

Drwal, 25, made his octagon debut with a second-round TKO loss to Thiago Silva at UFC 75. The loss snapped Drwal’s 13-fight win streak. Fighting out of Poland, the 25-year-old had posted 10 first-round stoppages during the streak. Most of the fights took place in Germany, Poland and other European countries.

UFC 81 is headlined by an interim heavyweight title fight between Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Tim Syvlia. The event also features Brock Lesnar’s UFC debut against former UFC heavyweight champ Frank Mir.

For the latest news about UFC 81, check out the UFC Rumors section of MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com).

A total of 26 fighters got their chance to shine on Saturday as part of UFC 190 at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena. Now that UFC 190 is in the books, it’s time to commence MMAjunkie’s “Three Stars” ceremony.

The man known for cranking submissions to the point of injury added eye-gouging to his repertoire. But is the controversy of Rousimar Palhares too essential to his bizarre, awful appeal for his employers to take any meaningful action against him?